This is only the second time the main arm of the State Department
has formally reached out to POGO since receiving our letter (we did meet informally
with an embassy official earlier this week). The first? That would be
word from the Office of the Inspector General saying they can neither
confirm nor deny the existence of investigation, even though the
investigation had been reported by the press an hour earlier. In the next day's press briefing, a State Department spokesman said that security at the embassy has not been
compromised—a position that bluntly contradicts reports from
whistleblowers, memos from guard force supervisors, and even the
department's own contracting officers.

So far the State Department has swiftly disciplined some of the
guards involved in the hazing rituals. And while lurid pictures may be
worth a thousand words, the bulk of our letter focused on systemic
issues that went far beyond the obscene extracurricular activities of
portions of the guard force. The State Department still has a host of
big-picture problems to address. Will it be able to hire a guard force
free of internal language barriers? How does it plan to protect
whilstleblowers? And perhaps most importantly, can the department prove
that it can properly oversee its contractors?

Unfortunately, it will take much more than a perfunctory reply before we're ready to declare these issues "Solved."